One famous author recently announced the print date of his new book, 4th in the series. While the book release is still some time away, the pre-orders have already opened. And it was pretty heartening to note that pre-orders started with independent book stores. For the last few years, most of the pre-orders of books by famous authors have solely been offered on Amazon. Infact, even when the books reach the stores, they are not sold before the actual release date – the choice then is that either one waits to make a trip to the bookstore post the launch or end up ordering from Amazon.
So when this announcement came, I was reminded of the days of Harry Potter craze. Those were the days of pre-Flipkart and Amazon, one browsed in physical book stores instead of online browsing. And we pre-ordered the Harry Potter books with 100% advance from the book stores. And on the day of the book release, one could see long queues outside the book stores – children and adults alike eagerly waiting to get their hands on the next one in the series, the phenomenon much before the queues of iPhone launches.
I was part of the hoopla those days, and my pre-order for this one has also been placed at my favourite book store in Delhi. Long live the indie book stores!
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